Karen Dielmann
Every year residents here at the Ranch have the opportunity to participate in a new holiday tradition … attending the Robson Ranch Singers Holiday Show! This year on Dec. 8 and 9, the Singers will present their Holiday Show in the Hermosa Ballroom beginning at 7 p.m. The theme for this year’s performance is Holiday Lights: Let It Shine. The theme will focus on light-centered traditions related to the December holidays and the memories they bring to the season. Tickets for this year’s shows are on sale as of Nov. 1 on the HOA website. You can go in and select the seat(s) you want for the night(s) you want.
When you think about December holidays from days past, what are some of the memories that you have? And do those memories include holiday lights in any way?
Some members of the Singers shared their memories of holiday lights. Connie Koza says that what sticks in her mind the most as a child is when all of her aunts, uncles, and cousins (on her dad’s side of the family) would meet at her Uncle Bill and Aunt Bette’s house in Milwaukee. She says, “They had their house really decked out with lights inside and out, but the ones I really loved and remember are the bubble lights that were strung down the stairway to the basement where the kids would hang out. The lights looked like little candles, many on one string, and it looked like they had moving bubbles in them.”
Vera Cannella remembers the lights and store fronts in NYC at Christmas time. She says “As a child there was no better light display than the storefronts along 5th Avenue in New York City during the Christmas Holiday Season.” Every department store along the Avenue would replace their regular store front clothing displays with magical Christmas themed windows; each store trying to “out do” the others with lots of lights, glitter, garland, and moving animated characters in all the windows.They all brought the light of Christmas to life,” she muses. Kids and adults alike loved the lights on the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and the lit–up marquee at Radio City Music Hall. She emphasized that, “With so many lights all around the city, you could not help but believe in the magic of the holiday!”
Julie Feldman also remembers going to see all the big department store windows in Manhattan during the holiday season. But she also has a “weird” holiday memory of a year that she was the department head of Speech & Audiology in a hospital during the December holiday season. She says the department had a small Christmas tree at the reception desk. But they didn’t have any decorations for it, so they “improvised” and one year they decided to hang earmolds from it!
Please, come join us on Dec. 8 and/or 9 for an evening of music, memories, and the magic of holiday lights.